If you only know Byron Allen as a stand-up comic and host of the syndicated series “Comics Unleashed,” you’re due for a primer.

Allen has graduated from cracking jokes to media mogul status. In the last five days, the executive stunned Sundance by offering $20 million for Nate Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation.” He lost the historic bidding war, but helped drive up the price to the record $17.5 million that Fox Searchlight paid for the slave revolt drama.

Undeterred by the loss, he then turned around and dropped a $10 billion lawsuit on the Federal Communications Commission and Charter Communications over the latter’s proposed merger with Time Warner Cable.

Another lawsuit filed by Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios Networks, Inc. and The National Association of African American-Owned Media (NAAAOM) announced today...

The specifics, from the press release...

Yesterday, Wednesday, January 27, 2016, Allen's Entertainment Studios and the NAAAOM filed a $10 billion lawsuit against Charter Communications for engaging in racial discrimination in contracting against 100% African American-owned media in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. section 1981; and against President Obama's Federal Communications Commission for approving mega-media mergers, such as Comcast/NBCUniversal, that discriminate against African American-owned media.